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OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

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Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#4
... and after the latest openai episode, we now know that msft was pulling the strings in the "shadows" (the "nah! I am just supporting without doing anything...").

It is not conspiracy anything to think it is certainly happening elsewhere.

And there is so much critical open source stuff on github... that said, github is at least noscript/basic (x)html friendly for its core functions.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#5
post #4

... and after the latest openai episode, we now know that msft was pulling the strings in the "shadows" (the "nah! I am just supporting without doing anything..."). It is not conspiracy anything to think it is certainly happening elsewhere. And there is so much critical open source stuff on github... that said, github is at least noscript/basic (x)html friendly for its core functions.

Sadly, viewing source code no longer appears to work without JavaScript…

Edit: tested in w3m

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#6
post #4

... and after the latest openai episode, we now know that msft was pulling the strings in the "shadows" (the "nah! I am just supporting without doing anything..."). It is not conspiracy anything to think it is certainly happening elsewhere. And there is so much critical open source stuff on github... that said, github is at least noscript/basic (x)html friendly for its core functions.

> ... and after the latest openai episode, we now know that msft was pulling the strings in the "shadows" (the "nah! I am just supporting without doing anything..."

Do we?

What evidence is there that Microsoft was "pulling the strings in the shadows"?

As far as we know Microsoft only found out a minute before Sam did that he was being fired.

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#8
they didn’t want to leave because of OpenAI’s great compensation packages ($300k+)

I do think it is a little unfair to characterize MSFT as “slow and boring” when they’ve been the ones to make the fastest pivot to supporting generative AI as a product line

Re: OpenAI employees did not want to go work for Microsoft

#10
pg talks about how Sam Altman is the most powered person he's ever met. Seems we have a super powerful psychopath running perhaps the most important company in human history.

I do think he legitimately believes he's doing the right thing though all throughout, which maybe makes it more scary.

Sorta like how Mark Zuckerberg seemed to truly believe in Facebook's mission and wound up having all sorts of negative externalities for the world. Mark Zuckerberg just isn't quite as effective as Sam Altman, and it's easier to be suspicious of his motives.

Not to say that psychopaths are necessarily bad. Peter in Ender's Shadow turned out great!

But it does seem dangerous for 1 person to hold so much power over the future of humanity.

Sam Altman's reasoning for him having all the power, I think, is that “short timelines and slow takeoff is likely the safest quadrant of the short/long timelines and slow/fast takeoff matrix.”

If you believe that and believe that Sam Altman having complete control of OpenAI is the best way to accomplish that, everything seems fine.

I'd personally have preferred trying to optimize for long timelines and a slow takeoff too, which I think might have been doable if we'd devoted more resources to neglected approaches to AI alignment–like enhancing human capabilities with BCI and other stuff like that.

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